Monday, March 25, 2013

Slower Week

Hello family!

This week has been a little slower than all the other weeks of my mission
(along with really cold weather), but just because it was slow didn't make it
bad! Transfers were last week, so I went on another 14 hour train ride to
Bucharest to pick up my companion and spend the day there. We arrived pretty
early, so we had some time to walk around "Old Bucharest" and take
some pictures. The buildings reminded me a lot of Amsterdam, and I felt more
like a tourist than a missionary. When we got back to the train station, I
finally got to meet my new

companion! Elder Groberg is from Bountiful, Utah and
he has 3 months left on his mission (So basically he might be finishing his mission
in Moldova). He's very talented with the Romanian language and is well on his
way to master the Russian alphabet! I'm loving this zebra companionship. It's
really pushing me to learn Russian a lot better, and I think it was the perfect
time for me in my mission to have this happen. I feel a better connection with
the people, and my understanding has drastically improved.
On Sunday, the branch presidency met with all the missionaries and basically
they want to improve the effort we're putting into rescuing the less-actives.
"This branch used to have 90 active members... Now we are down to less
than half of that." What happened? I don't know, but we're going to fix
it! Finding seems to be going a lot better. Elder Monroe told me that they met
a woman knocking that we handed a Mormon.org card to 3 months

ago, and her
and her daughter committed to be baptized when they receive their answers.
We're starting to see the fruits of our labors! There was actually one day
where all the missionaries in Chisinau extended the baptismal invitation to
somebody, and not everybody said yes, but it shows that we're all helping our
investigators work towards baptism.

We had a lot of lessons fall through, and people not answer their phones, but
we keep moving forward and finding people. Our first full day together, we
decided to walk from our apartment to the church and talk to people on the way.
It turned out to be a lot of fun! I was surprised by how well people listened to
us and responded back

in both languages. We talked to a lot of Jehovah's
Witnesses and two guys gave us their numbers so we could meet up later. One of
those men expressed an interest in learning more about our church, and meeting
with us. We met with Vitalli again yesterday, and he only speaks Russian, so
poor Elder Groberg just had to sit and smile the entire lesson. Luckily, I had
a recent convert with me to help out because I had the responsibility of

being
the lead teacher. He understands everything we teach perfectly, and he said
he'd come to church next week! But at the end of the lesson he showed us a clip
from Passion of the Christ where He is being beaten, whipped, and crucified. It
was so graphic that it was hard to watch, but it brought the Atonement to a
whole other level for me... It made it more real... The suffering that Christ
went through for each and every one of us is

unimaginable. He went through
every pain, every suffering, and every sadness that anyone will ever go
through, and after watching that video, everything that Christ did for me sunk
deeper into my heart. The awesome thing is is that I get to share this
testimony and these feelings I have about the Savior of the world every single
day. I don't know why I never had this realization before my mission, but I
wouldn't trade this knowledge for anything.

I wish I had a better memory, but my mind is running all day long, so it's hard
for me to make my emails more detailed. I'll work on getting better! Sorry for
not sending any pictures for the past two weeks too, my usb drive

was being
stubborn... I hope you enjoy the pictures for this week! Thank you for your
continued support and love. I pray and think about every single one of you
every day!